Marketing maturity models measure elements related to the key success factors of good marketing to help you quantify just how and where you’ve made progress and where you still need to put in a little more effort.

There are unique challenges a marketing transformation team needs to overcome that are just as specialized and difficult as what these circus performers do and you need to keep these in mind as you embark on your adventure.

Transformation is complicated. Plus, things never go as planned. That’s why your marketing transformation team needs the right business skills, lots of subject matter expertise, and the right sort of temperament.

Data will almost tell you what areas of your business you need to focus on. You’ll also be in a much better place to create and test out hypotheses when because they’ll be based on empirical evidence rather than someone’s gut instinct.

If you can understand your buyer very well, you can anticipate her every move and thought. That, in turn, will help you create marketing that is so perfectly targeted that it get her to do what you want her to do, very much like dogs do to their humans.

Changes of any kind stick because they are entrenched in the minds of people involved. Unfortunately, many marketing transformations spend a great deal of time, money, and energy on re-engineering process and integrating new tools but forget about changing people’s behavior.

There are many reasons marketing transformations fail, fear of change, discomfort with uncertainty, and lack of confidence are often the culprits. However, another reason for so many failures is lack of consideration for the scale of change needed.

Things may not work out exactly as you had planned but, if you have a clear and concise vision of the outcome and stick to it, you’ll end up a lot closer to your goal than if you didn’t have a vision of the end result. You’ll also be a lot less terrified of the great unknown and a lot more likely to take that giant leap forward into a better future.